Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Like other traditionalist thinkers, Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947) contrasted archaic societies with modern societies. Based on studies of the former’s way of life, he built an anthropology from which he concluded that the modern social, economic and political order is incompatible with human nature. According to Coomaraswamy, man must read in the world and in his own nature the meaning that comes from the divine sphere. This is made possible by symbols contained in myths that are preserved in culture. Man expresses symbols and myths through art – he is by nature a creator and artist. The secularism of modern societies has separated the human sphere from the divine. According to Coomaraswamy, this results in sterile industrial productivism in the economy and senseless, abstract ‘art’ in culture. In modern society, regardless of its particular political and economic system, individual freedom is a fiction, because it forces man to live an uncreative, i.e. unnatural life. Coomaraswamy saw the way to remedy this situation in the reform of society in the neo-medieval manner.
Source: Teoria Polityki
Author: Adam Danek
Institution: Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4414409983